REVIEW: Wonder Boys

For the past week I've been on a little movie kick--looking for films that I've heard about for years and forming my own opinion of them. I loved Mean Girls, but I could not get through You Can Count On Me (the 1/2 hour I watched felt like 2 hours.)

One of the great things about Netflix is the search engine, which you can use for films and also for actors. Sometimes I'm an "actor watcher" more than a "film watcher." I don't even remember how I found Wonder Boys, but it was probably searching through the Robert Downey Jr. list of movies, because he is one of my favorite actors who never fails to surprise and impress me.

Like the others I've watched this week, I had heard about Wonder Boys for years. And when it was done, my first thought was, "It's like Dead Poet's Society on marijuana." That's not an insult, just an observation. Michael Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a creative writing professor at a small unnamed college in Pittsburgh, a city whose washed out colors seem to match this washed up writer. His one success, a book called The Arsonist's Daughter, is his biggest competition, because he has never been able to come up with anything that is its equal. And yes, he self-medicates. As a result, life's events seem to bounce off him without ever getting absorbed. This make him charming yet frustrating to everyone who knows him.

Tripp is just one of a group of interesting characters brought to life by some great actors. Robert Downey Jr., with his usual brilliance, plays Terry "Crabs" Crabtree--Tripp's editor--whose career has taken a downward spiral as he has waited for 7 years for Tripp's next book. Tobey Maguire is James Leer, Tripp's most talented and misunderstood student, who has parent issues, suicide issues, and an obsession with the gory details of celebrity deaths. The 2 women in the film, Katie Holmes and Francis McDormand, are the voices of reason--Holmes as a writing student who rents a room from Tripp, and McDormand as the college chancellor with whom Tripp is having an affair.

The story is a series of intertwined, twisted puzzle pieces that take place over 3 days, but the acting and writing are so good, that the viewer feels like they know everything about the characters by the time those 3 days are over. The director, Curtis Hansen, is also the director of LA Confidential, another great movie that plays in much the same way. The fragments seem very disjointed, but they come together at the right time and the viewer is left very satisfied.

I had read that Wonder Boys was underrated, and I agree. It's intelligence is probably also its downfall, because the larger population doesn't respond well to intelligent movies. Again, not an insult, just an observation. This movie is all dialogue and character development, not action sequences and special effects. And the story isn't for everyone, because the characters are all flawed, and they stay that way. Still, I was engrossed from start to finish, the definite sign of a good and worthy film.

(Good summary here.)